Falling
by hhooppyy
Summary: Pre-Show. Trudging across campus, Kate was nearly oblivious to her surroundings—bumping into students too slow to jump out of her way and walking away without a word. The shouts hurled in her direction were garbled, as if they were traveling through water, and barely above a whisper in her ears.


She could see the toll this was taking on her dad. The sorrow was clear to anyone who looked. He was trying to be there for her. He stood next to her at the funeral and afterwards at the wake he had dutifully talked to all the family and friends who had come by to share their condolences. It was there that he had his first drink. _A shot of whiskey to numb the pain a little to get through the day_ was what he had told her when she saw. As the day dragged on, she saw him take more and more shots. But, really, who was she to judge. The day was hell and if that was what he needed to make it through, she would give him that. By the end of the night, the bottle was empty and her father had finally had enough to numb the pain.

Pushing his feet up onto the couch where he had passed out, and rolling him onto his side, Kate pulled a blanket over him and set about cleaning up the remnants of the day.

Waking up screaming a couple hours later, Kate sat up, gasping for breath. As her breathing came back under control, she couldn't stop the images her imagination had conjured up from invading her waking mind. Her mother's body, broken and twisted, thrown away like a bag of trash lying in some dirty, dank alleyway. The images would not leave her alone. Clawing at her head, Kate wished the images would leave her alone; that she could sleep in peace, or at least some facsimile thereof.

Pushing up from her bed, Kate walked into her parent's room and walked to her mother's side of the bed. Reaching out a tentative hand, Kate gently rubbed her finger over the frame of the picture her mother kept there before picking it up. Collapsing to the ground, Kate stared at the picture, one of her and her mother from when Kate was about six years old. While little Kate was sitting there with the biggest gap-tooth smile, bright pink cast on her arm, holding up a little kitten for the camera, her mother had been sitting behind her with a bemused expression on her face.

Ignoring the little girl in the forefront, Kate traced lightly over her mother's face before setting the picture on the ground beside her and pulling a second picture from the bedside table—a picture of her mom and her dad on their wedding day. They had looked so happy. The way her mother was looking at her father was pure joy and happiness.

As she sat holding the picture, the tears started rolling down her cheeks. After having been crying for so long, she no longer tried to staunch the tears, letting them roll unhindered until they hung from the tip of her chin and dropped silently to the picture she was holding. Not caring, she let the fall as she clutched the photo to her chest and leaned into the corner formed by the bed and the nightstand and closed her eyes.

Rubbing her eyes as she came to a couple hours later, Kate was surprised to discover that she had actually managed to sleep through the rest of the night.

-o-O-o-

Days had passed and, yet, nothing had changed. No matter how much Kate wished it to be so, her mother was still dead and her father was still not taking it well. He tried to hide it from her, to put up a false front, but she could see right through him. It was eating him alive and she had no idea how to help him. Really, how could she help him when she was drowning herself?

As her father drank, trying to forget the horror of the world that now surrounded him, Kate wrapped herself up in memories of her mother. She sat in her parents room, looking at pictures, folding and unfolding clothes, even holding them up to smell them…to inhale the scent of her mother. When all that wasn't enough, she started pulling books from her mother's shelves. They were full to bursting with works of fiction and non-fiction alike—tragedy, comedy, history, law. Every genre seemed to have a place on those shelves.

Each book she pulled from the shelf was given a cursory once over, perhaps Kate even read the first few pages, but none grabbed her attention and pulled her out of the hell she was currently living in.

-o-O-o-

By time a week had passed, her mother's death felt no more real than it had when she was told. Only now she knew that the detectives assigned her case were no longer looking. They didn't care enough to keep searching for the man—or men—who had taken her mother from her unnecessarily. They had written it off as random gang violence.

When she heard that, when it had really sunk in that her mother—the woman who fought for the downtrodden, the falsely accused. The woman who believed in justice for all would not be getting her own justice, Kate had felt her blood boil. She wanted to strike out at the detective—Raglan. She wanted to make him feel the pain that was tearing her apart. Make him keep investigating. Make him do more. But instead she backed off. Let the man walk away. The fight seeming to leave her as quickly as it had appeared.

-o-O-o-

Sitting on the floor of her own room, Kate contemplated the suitcase before her. She had brought home as little as possible when she had come home from Christmas—an attempt to show her parents that she was independent and happy and going back to Stanford. While she was still their little girl, she was growing up and happy.

Now, staring at that suitcase, Kate wished that she had brought home more things with her. Had she known what was going to happen, she would have brought it all home with her—told her parents how she really felt, that she missed them and that being independent wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Sure she had her friends and had fun, but there were some things that you just couldn't get three thousand miles away from the person from whom you needed it.

Kate was nearly to the point where she was contemplating unpacking when her father entered the room and sat down beside her. It was the first time in a week that Kate had seen him without a tumbler of scotch in his hand, or passed out with an empty bottle beside him.

"Katie. I know that look. You are not going to do that. You are not going to drop everything and move home. It isn't what your mother would want and you know it. She would want you to live your life. Go to school, earn your degree, make friends, and break hearts. She would most certainly not want you to drop that life to mourn her."

"How am I supposed to do that?" Kate frustratedly asked as she pulled a shirt from the suitcase. "Mom is dead and no one seems to care. The detectives gave up on her. Marked her down as another statistic. Mom is not a statistic." Rising from the floor, Kate started pacing around the room getting angrier the more she thought about their situation. "Mom deserves justice. She deserves so much more than what she is getting. How can I go back to school and pretend to be happy when I know mom is dead and that no one is fighting for her?"

"Katie," pulling slightly on her arm, Jim pulls her into his arms and wraps her up in a hug. "Your mother may be dead but that doesn't mean that you have to stop living too. You need to go back to school. The distance will do you some good. And there'll be no argument. You are going back to school tomorrow and that is final."

-o-O-o-

Trudging across campus, Kate was nearly oblivious to her surroundings—bumping into students too slow to jump out of her way and walking away without a word. The shouts hurled in her direction were garbled, as if they were traveling through water, and barely above a whisper in her ears.

Opening the door to her dorm room, she barely had the energy to push the door closed, not even caring if it latched, before dumping her bag on the floor and collapsing on her bed.

_How could she have let her dad talk her into this? What was she doing back at school?_ _This had been a humongous mistake._

_At first, school had been a welcome reprieve. It did give her the distance that she needed to make sense of what had happened. Yes, her mother was dead. No, she wasn't required to stop living because of it. She had hung out with her friends, gone to classes, even gone to some of the Nebula 9 fan club meetings, although they didn't seem to hold quite the same appeal as before. _

_She had been moving forward._

_Then, with no warning, it all came flooding back to her. Something one of the professors had said in class brought it all back—the injustice in the world, the injustice of her mother's death. _

_It was with that realization that she finally made a decision about her life. She would no longer be studying pre-law and she would no longer be attending Stanford. She wasn't quite sure what she would do beyond that, but she knew she needed to get back to the city, back to her father—back to her mother's unsolved murder._

Moving with a purpose she had not felt in weeks, Kate rolled off her bed and started haphazardly packing her things in any bags or boxes she could find.

-o-O-o-

Rolling to a stop in front of her apartment, Kate paid the cab driver and quickly pulled her things from the trunk before trudging up the stairs.

Opening the door, Kate was nearly bowled over by the overwhelming smell of alcohol and sick that permeated the small, dark space. Pulling her things inside, Kate shut the door before walking towards the windows to let some light and air in.

"No, don't," a weak voice slurred as the light filled the room. "No light."

Looking around, Kate saw her father passed out on the couch, empty liquor bottles surrounding him. Walking towards her father, Kate jumped back in disgust as she nearly stepped in a pile of vomit that covered the floor beside the couch.

Stepping around the debris that surrounded the couch, Kate lightly slapped her father, trying to get him to wake up. "Dad? Dad, it's me, Kate. You need to wake up now."

"DAD!" Finally yelling when he didn't respond, Kate jumped back as her dad started and rolled from the couch.

Looking up blearily from his position on the floor, Jim looked up at the girl before him. "Katie?" reaching out, he attempted to touch his daughter only to have his arm fall to the floor having passed right in front of Kate. "Whatcha doin' home? What 'bout schoo-?"

"It doesn't matter why I'm here dad. We can talk later. First, let's get you cleaned up a bit." Pulling him gingerly from the floor, careful not to let any of the dirt and grime that covered her father land on her, she slowly lead him to the bathroom before nearly shoving him beneath the cold spray of the shower, clothes and all.

When she was pretty sure that he wasn't going to fall and hurt himself, Kate left him alone and headed to the living room to try and clean up some of the damage.

-o-O-o-

Fifteen minutes later, Jim emerged from the bathroom, more sober than he had been when his daughter shoved him under the showerhead, to find the front room more or less cleaned up and his daughter sitting at the kitchen table, a look of disappointment covering her face.

"Dad? What's going on?"

Sitting down heavily in the chair beside Kate, Jim took the pills and water Kate held out to him before looking back up at her. "I miss your mother. That's the short and long of it. I miss her so much and I don't know how to…well, how to do anything without her. It's just too hard."

"Bullshit, dad." Standing up abruptly from the table, Kate rounded on her father. "What happened to all that crap you spouted at me before shunting me back to Stanford? All that stuff about continuing to live because that's what mom would have wanted? What? Does that only apply to me? Do you think mom would want you to drown yourself like this?"

"Of course it didn't only apply to you. I tried, Katie. I really tried. I can't do it. I DON'T know how to do this without her. She was the one who made it worthwhile to get up each day. Without her, what do I have?"

"You have me dad. You have a job. You have a life to get back to."

"I wish that were enough, but I don't think it is."

Stepping back as if she had been slapped, Kate stared, shocked at the words that had just come out of her father's mouth. "_I'm_ not enough for you? You can't even pull yourself out of the bottle for _your daughter?_ How have you gotten_ this_ bad so fast?" Turning around, Kate headed back towards the front door.

"Where're you going?"

"What's it matter? You obviously don't care about me…"

"Katie. You will not speak to me like that. I do care…"

"You sure have an odd way of showing it." With that, Kate slammed the door behind her before she could let her father see the tears that were starting to roll down her face.

-o-O-o-

Walking through the crowded sidewalks, Kate let the flow of people dictate her direction, too blinded by her tears and anguish to actively participate in her movements. All she knew was that she needed to get away.

Without warning, Kate came to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk, causing the people around her to curse her as they had to quickly dodge her or run into her. What caused Kate to stop wasn't readily apparent, even to her, but as she looked around she finally saw that she had come to a stop in front of a small bookstore.

The little bell jingled merrily above the door as she walked in, a complete contrast to her current mood, announcing her arrival to all who may be in the store.

Walking quickly down a random aisle before anyone could say anything, Kate ran her fingers along the spines of the books, the occasional title catching her eye but nothing that made her stop.

After walking down several eyes, Kate's eyes alit on a bright green cover with a cow's skull on the front. Pausing, Kate pulled the book from the shelf and flipped open to the first page. As she quickly read, she realized that that book was one that she has pulled from her mother's shelf weeks before and unceremoniously tossed aside, but this time the book was pulling her in.

Heading for the collection of chairs that sat in a semi-circle before a large picture window, Kate sat down, kicked her tennis shoes off, pulled her feet up beneath her and continued reading.

Putting down the book, a small smile on her face on reaching the end and discovering that in the end the victim got justice, Kate arched her back to stretch out the muscles that had become tight from sitting for so long, and was shocked to see that the light outside had changed from the dappled sunlight of early afternoon to the darkness of early evening. Standing up, Kate grabbed the book she had been reading as well as all the other books by that author on the shelf and quickly paid for them before heading back for her father's apartment.

She now had a new purpose. She was no longer going to be the first woman Supreme Court justice…she was going to be a cop—a homicide detective to be precise. She was going to give families the closure she never got. She was going to get her mother justice—refuse to let her murder be written off as random gang violence any longer. She was going to make the world a better place.

_Vincit omnia veritas_


End file.
